Note: Written in November 2023.

I had a 25-year career as a bureaucrat and don't have anything from that time that people will point and say, "He did that." So whatever mark I make is with my hobby. That's why I'm doing this time-consuming archiving project, to preserve my photography from the past 25 years and hope someone finds it of interest someday. So when I can't find the original files for some images on my web site, I panic just a little bit. Fortunately that did not happen until I got back to 2009.

In the Canon G6 original files on my hard drives, there was a 1000-image gap in numbering. I knew the missing images consisted of two events, a hot-air balloon launch in Sioux Falls and robins building a nest under my deck. I found a DVD that contained all of the balloon images and almost half of the robin images. There are still about 600 missing robin images. Of the three robin images shown below, the first is from the newly-found batch, the second is only one from the missing group for which I have the original, and the third is a resized image processed back in 2009. The problem is I was using 1024x768 as my standard size back then, and now I'm at 1800x1200. The missing pixels from that image are lost forever, as are the 600 or so other images.

Maybe there's a missing backup DVD somewhere, but I'm not confident. Not the greatest tragedy ever, but it is what I'm trying to avoid.

The reason I had hundreds of robin nest images is I put the G6 on a tripod, set it to take a flash picture every two minutes, and put it under my deck. For a few weeks that summer I was unable to go in my back yard without being dive bombed by the robins, either to protect their young or in retaliation for subjecting them to the flash. After 2009, I decided I would rather have the freedom of my own yard and put netting around the deck to keep the robins from nesting.

Inside a balloon launch

Newly processed

Reprocessed

Original lost